31 The Lunch Box 3909 Moss St. B · Lafayette, LA 70507 The Lunch Box, a plate lunch and po-boy joint in 45 the far reaches of upper Lafayette, perched near the Carencro border, is filled with lunch boxes. There are hundreds of them, constructed of metal and plastic, featuring decades of Americana, everything from I Love Lucy to G.I. Joe, lining a series of high Ton's Drive-In shelves that ring the restaurant's walls, staring 101 W Main St. · Broussard, LA 70518 down at customers enjoying one of the region's Every morning, Monday through Saturday, as premier plates of rice and gravy. Delores and Cline the sun dawns on the town of Broussard, Ton's entered the industry without having any restaurant Drive-In bustles with patrons. They are mostly or professional cooking experience. But it was men, many retired. Some up early because their no accident that The Lunch Box prospered. They job demands it, sitting in the booths in the dining shared the kitchen as well as order counter duties room, filling up on coffee and fried eggs on toast and expanded the menu they inherited. At high and, most satisfying of all, talk. Throughout the noon, the dining room is undoubtedly one of the drive-in's first several years, Ton also managed most bustling in town. Regulars come for the rich a hardware store in downtown Lafayette. His stews (meatball on Monday, chicken on Tuesday) wife, Rosemary, who had to leave her job as a and smothered items (Monday's liver, Tuesday's dress shop seamstress, ran the restaurant during potatoes). Thursday's fried chicken—also served the day operating the kitchen. When Broussard baked for the healthy at heart—brings in the started to grow, Ton's relocated across the street lunchers. But Friday's seafood menu makes for the and added the town's first drive-thru as well as busiest afternoon. There's always a crowd, and often plate lunches. Today, the daily plate lunch specials a line out the door during Lent for fried fish, shrimp alternate between the familiar and the week-to- stew, and catfish court bouillon. It's also the only week changeups. You might find meatball stew day where you can score a helping of the LeBlanc's on Tuesday, or you might discover smothered homemade bread pudding, served with each order. pork. Fridays might bring crawfish étouffée or You can also get the full seafood menu for supper. shrimp stew. But there is always hamburger The Lunch Box is one of the area's few plate lunch steak smothered with grilled onions on Mondays, places open for dinner—Thursday and Friday nights smothered liver served over rice on Tuesdays, only. It is also, diverging from plate lunch tradition, and pork chops, fried or grilled, on Thursdays. open on weekends. Saturday delivers up a fried pork Broussard residents like knowing what they're chop, Sunday a barbecue plate laden with a trifecta going to get when they pull into Ton's. of pork, chicken, and sausage. (337) 837-6684 · Monday - Friday 6 a.m. - 2 p.m. Saturday 7 a.m. - 2 p.m. · TonsDriveIn.com 7 a.m. - 2 p.m. · 6 a.m. - 2 p.m. Saturday - Friday (337) 837-6684 · Monday (337) 233-8298 · Saturday - Wednesday 10:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. Thursday 10:30 a.m. - 7 p.m. Friday 10:30 a.m. - 8 p.m. · LunchBoxMenu.com 10:30 a.m. - 7 p.m. Friday Thursday 10:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. Wednesday - (337) 233-8298 · Saturday 12 17 20 Creole Gary's IG Lunch House Dwyer's Café Grocery & Market 713 12th St. · Lafayette, LA 70501 323 Jefferson St. · Lafayette, LA 70501 104 Lamar St. · Lafayette, LA 70501 For the owner of the Creole Lunch House, rice It's one of Lafayette's most iconic signs: a man By the 1980s, and the era of oversized is the grain of life. Growing up just outside in a chef's coat and toque rendered in stained supermarkets, Pop Gary's son, Wayne, shifted Lafayette, Merline Herbert fondly remembers glass. He holds a long carving knife and fork, gears, from groceries to gravy, and Gary's her mother cooking rice each and every day to and slices into the breast of a roast turkey. A became a neighborhood spot for daily plate serve for lunch. She maintains a confidence in pineapple and cherry-covered ham, fashioned lunches. As with any plate lunch emporium, the virtues of the rice pot. Herbert learned to trust from slivers of yellow and red glass, rests rice and gravy form the foundation of almost her pots as a young woman, cooking alongside adjacent to the large bird, awaiting the chef's every order. Here the gravy's base begins her mother at home for her four siblings. Cooking blade. Elbows akimbo, he smiles at the viewer with the pan drippings from those smothered rice, smothering meat with onions and peppers, meats, bolstered with onion, pepper, garlic, simmering beans, and stewing greens. Too restless with cheery upturned brows. Arcing above his and spice. It's served alongside the hamburger to enjoy retirement, Herbert, with her husband's head, like a child's representation of the sun steak special on Wednesdays and Thursday's prodding, opened up the Creole Lunch House in or a giant halo, is the name of this restaurant: smothered steak. Fridays fulfill the promise of 1983. She brought to the menu the same smothered "Dwyer's Cafe." Come to Dwyer's today and, if seafood: crawfish fettuccine, crawfish étouffée, dishes and sides that she had been cooking for you don't order off the standard menu, you'll crawfish stew (a half-and-half order of both most of her life. Meatball fricassee on Mondays and be ushered down a long hall to the back of the crawfish dishes served atop rice is strongly Wednesdays. Stuffed baked chicken on Tuesdays restaurant to the steam table full of lunch entree and Thursdays. Fricasseed chicken dished up every suggested). Po-boys are an everyday item, as options. You can get roast pork or beef most day. And rice and gravy served every day. Herbert are smothered beans—black-eyed peas or red any day of the week, Monday through Sunday, makes sure never to run out of the prized starch. beans depending on the weekday. And then along with a variety of smothered choices: The Creole Lunch House is also justly famous for there's the Big G Burger, a double-patty, half- chicken, pork chop, or steak. There's more exotic its stuffed bread. These are fresh-baked, fist-sized pound behemoth of a hamburger dressed with rolls, loaded with sausage, cheese, and jalapeños. fare served every now and then like Tuesday's smothered onions. For breakfast, it's topped Another version comes packed with crawfish and calf tongue, or the stuffed bell pepper special. with bacon and a fried egg (it's okay to sleep gooey cheese. Rice makes lunch, rice makes the Fridays bring seafood, of course: shrimp stew, in, the breakfast burger is served until Gary's meal, and at the Creole Lunch House, it is always shrimp étouffée, fried catfish, seafood casserole. kitchen closes at 2 p.m.). time for meat and rice. (337) 232-9929 · Monday - Friday · 11 a.m. - 2 p.m. RestaurantWebExperts.com/CreoleLunchHouse/ - Friday (337) 232-9929 · Monday (337) 235-9364 · Monday - Sunday · 6 a.m. - 2 p.m. · RestaurantWebWxperts.com/DwyersCafe/ - Sunday (337) 235-9364 · Monday · 6:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. · Garys-IG-Grocery-Market.Business.Site - Friday (337) 235-2921 · Monday 28 36 43 Laura's II Café Nobert's Restaurant T'Coons 1904 W University Ave. · Lafayette, LA 70506 521 Ave. C · Broussard, LA 70518 1900 W Pinhook Rd. · Lafayette, LA 70508 Laura's granddaughter, Madonna, remembers The walls of Norbert's, the oldest existing sit- At T-Coon's, the opportunity to grab a plate standing at a distance, watching her down restaurant in Broussard, which is owned lunch stretches back beyond the traditional grandmother make each day's gravy. When by John Norbert and is run with his wife, Lilly lunchtime hours into the early morning. In deciding whether or not to pursue a third Mae, tell this story. There are old photos of addition to the standard breakfast of eggs, iteration of the family business, Madonna took Broussard landmarks, quilts that portray the bacon, and grits, the menu includes omelettes that gravy recipe and made up her mind to cook history of this town, and greater Acadiana stitch stuffed with pork roast, beef brisket, and things "Laura's way." And in 2000, Laura's II was by stitch. There's also, in a simple, wooden frame homemade Louisiana smoked sausage. But born. At Laura's II, Madonna Broussard keeps he made himself, a photo of the first Norbert's the standout is the crawfish étouffée-filled many of grandma Laura's original recipes intact. A favorite is the baked turkey wing, which arrives Restaurant. There is no online menu or Facebook omelette. The silkiness of the smothered pterodactyl-sized. Big and meaty, stuffed with post, updating customers on what the kitchen crawfish dish tangles with the whipped eggs acebook.com/Norbert-Restaurant garlic, black pepper, and cayenne, its topmost F is cooking. You must simply show up and check to form a creamy, butter-laden mishmash. For layer of skin is crisped to a beautiful crackling the chalkboard of daily specials. Show up for lunch the menu shifts to a bounty of fifteen from a final heat burst under the broiler.